Didn't Matter
by StrivingArtist
Summary: Back at the flat during the infamous Stag Night, Sherlock throws John off balance, with unforeseen consequences. Contains: dark themes, drugs, sex, violence, death.


**Didn't Matter**

* * *

Sherlock was sitting in John's chair. He was still wearing his suit, the same suit from yesterday morning in fact. His hands sat on the arms, picking without thought at the texture of the fabric.

How had he gotten this so wrong?

How had he missed it?

This morning everything had been-It was like the skies had parted after a long storm, and the warmth of the sun had pierced through the facade he held to so fiercely.

Lestrade was still in front of him. Still talking.

Was this what it had been like?

Was this what he had done after? Just sat?

He breathed in, smelling sweat and scotch and sex.

Not anymore.

The chill from outside was permeating him, seeping through his pores as it flooded through the windows ahead of him.

How had he missed this? How had Mycroft? How had any of them?

Someone must have noticed, a moment, a doubt, a worry, a hesitation, a lie. Something. But no. No one had seen it at all. And there was no way to fix that. Or undo it. Or delete it.

Delete him. This hollow ache would be in his chest for the rest of his life.

* * *

_Hand. Knee. Touching. Tension. Gripping. Hand. Knee. Leaning. Slipping. Please. Yes. Hand. Knee. God yes._ The alcohol they had consumed was having a more drastic impact on his mental coherency than he had anticipated.

"I don't mind."

_No. He moved. Hand Moved. John moved. Please No. Come back._

"Anytime."

He tried for levity. For a dispassionate tone. His Doctor wouldn't see it. Wouldn't notice. He never noticed when the detective alluded. _Hinted. Suggested. Implied. Flirted. Stated._

He shifted his leg, pushing against John's knee. Too hard. John lost his balance, sliding slowly, comically forward at first, then fell for real. He crashed out of his arm chair onto his knees. Sherlock tried to catch him, to prevent a concussion ending the night early. John fell further, and caught himself on Sherlock's thighs.

They both froze there. John was splayed into Sherlock's lap, one hand braced on the other man's hip, the other caught between the side of the chair and his best friend's leg. His face had been about to land in Sherlock's waistband. Now it hovered scant inches above it.

Somehow Sherlock had managed to arrest his fall partially, catching him with one hand on his chest and the other against his face.

There was no time to deduce John's reaction, he was too busy redirecting his attention from the rising implication in his trousers. So intent he was on that task, his thumb, utterly without either permission or prohibition, brushed gently down the stubble on John's cheek. It was impossible for them to be more frozen than they had been, but it was nevertheless the impression he received.

His own pulse thundered, its speed a sharp contrast to the way his breath had stopped entirely.

That was when John had looked up at him.

Blue eyes, no longer clouded by drink, pinned him into the chair as both sets of pupils dilated. Below his fingers John's pulse was rising.

_Don't. No assumptions. Don't move. Don't react. Don't pressure. Don't take advantage. Has to be John. Has to be his decision. _His mind really was working at a fraction its usual dexterity._ Memorize this. Won't be another chance._

"John." He began just as the older man spoke.

"Anytime?" His eyebrow raised.

* * *

Lestrade slipped down the stairs as soon as he heard the knock at the door. Sherlock saw, but paid it no more attention.

A murmuration began. He was trying to dissuade the new arrival. Probably. Wouldn't matter. Nothing did.

They got louder. An argument. About him. Wouldn't matter.

The door opened. Lestrade had lost.

Mycroft walked towards the arm chair. Stopped. Sat on the Client's chair instead.

He had realized his mistake with John not even forty-eight hours after meeting the doctor. The cabbie was dead, and they were giggling over Chinese. He had just been in the habit, on the rare instances when someone made an overture, of putting them off. "Married to my work" he had told John. _Not true. Just easier. Expedient._

Before they'd even returned to the flat he had been certain. Hopeless, since the man had seemingly cut off any implied feelings when Sherlock had rebuffed him. The impossible had never dissuaded Sherlock before though.

So he had simmered, suppressed, pretended. He had tried to delete the sentiment. Easier, certainly. Impossible. The desire had only grown. John was oblivious.

Moriarty had seen it instantly. Mycroft had seen it. Lestrade, the Yard. Stamford. Mrs. Hudson. Half of London it seemed.

John was adamant in his heterosexuality.

The Woman, and John had counted the texts. Jealousy? Encouragement?

Baskerville. John had been so angry. Sherlock admitted to attachment. Not all of it. Of course not. Some though. A truth, but not the whole truth.

The Fall. _Necessary. Expedient._ He had mourned, grieved, moved on. Sherlock was beaten and tortured and lost. John was dating. Sherlock wanted to hate him for it. Couldn't. He wanted to delete him. Couldn't. Tried to get himself killed. Failed. He had to come back to London. But John would forgive him. Of course he would.

Not as quickly as predicted, but he had, given time. Pulling him from a bonfire had helped.

He had stayed quiet. He had kept his mouth shut. John was engaged. Sherlock was the best man. John had made his choice. Sherlock would not interfere with it. Sherlock would support it.

But now. Now.

_Pupils. Pulse. Breath. Lips parting. Hand gripping._

He hadn't breathed since catching John.

He was waiting for the inevitable push away. For John to remind him once more that he was Not Gay.

Instead, John just exhaled, long and slow. The hot breath against his stomach raised hairs all along his body, making the battle against the flow of blood more difficult.

Now he would move away.

He didn't.

"Anytime?" He had asked. What it implied was beyond Sherlock's limited mental faculties at the time. With a flickering glance down to the zip below him, John queried again, "What about now?"

_Does that count? Is that enough? He's intoxicated. Heavily. Can't take advantage. Won't forgive me. Won't forgive myself. Mustn't ruin this. He's getting married. I'm the best man. Helped plan the wedding. Mustn't._

The breath he had been holding shuddered out of him as John rose, keeping his mouth so close it brushed against his shirt. Barely more than a minute had passed since John had first touched his knee, maybe two, but the air was bristling with electricity. He waited, struggling with the impulse to lock his mouth to John's and claim what he had wanted for so long.

Their lips weren't touching, not really, but they were close enough it almost seemed they were. John glanced to his lips, hesitating. Both were giving the other a chance to back away, to laugh it off, to make a joke.

Instead, John closed the distance.

* * *

Mycroft had been talking for a while. Something about the CIA. About Moriarty. About false identities and assassinations all over the world. About a network he had missed while dead.

It didn't matter.

The glasses were still on the side table. The ice had melted, watering down the scotch they had abandoned.

Mycroft wanted him to assist in the search.

He shook his head.

In the leather armrests of his chair across sitting from him he could see crescents scratches from his nails. Most of the sets were faint; anger, boredom, guilt. One set was new, and had caused far more damage.

* * *

Drunkenness did not provoke John to push too hard or take too quickly. Ever cautious around him, John had started with faint brushing kisses, waiting for a confirmation. But Sherlock was eventually able to convince himself this was actually happening, and parted his lips in reply.

It was a breaking point.

Somehow, opening his mouth to John's, and the faint sound that slipped from his throat had given some signal. The soldier was plundering his mouth now, laying claim to it. He caught the man's lower lip in his teeth, dragging across it, and reveling in the sound John made. It was half a moan and half a curse, and it simultaneously dispelled the haze of alcohol, and short circuited his brain.

Sherlock felt his hips pulled closer to edge of the seat, before being sat up straight. John pressed against his chest, one finger sliding along the inside of his waistband, pausing to tickle the hair there, and keep him trembling against the other hand which was deftly parting buttons.

His initial upset at the breaking of such a thorough and passionate snog lasted only long enough for John to travel to his neck. Suction. Pressure. Wet. Hot. OH. Whatever John was doing just below his jaw line was sending waves of electricity down his spine.

Belatedly he realized his hands were clutching the chair, nothing else, and resolved to correct the oversight.

With help he slipped out of his shirt and coat, tugging insistently at John's.

He ran the back of his fingers over the now exposed scar, trailing them them down between their bodies tenderly before slipping into the back of John's trousers and wrenching them back together. His thumb slid over John's lips, pink and flushed, stopping the man from restarting his previous quest; that being to snog themselves insensible.

"How long?" He asked softly, scared the answer would hurt, scared more the question wouldn't make sense.

"The pool." John answered eventually. Sherlock nodded silently. _Don't scare him. Stay quiet. Kiss him again_. But John wouldn't allow it until he got an admission too.

"The Cabbie."

"And you never told me." He rushed that out in a voice caught between fury and sorrow. Then he was crashing their lips back together and grinding against him.

This time the moan couldn't be denied. Although who was responsible was unclear.

_Pressure. Warm. Hard. Want. Need. Yes. John. Want._

Without knowing what John would allow, he tucked his longer legs behind his arse and pulled him tighter against him.

That moan was certainly John's.

* * *

Mycroft and Lestrade had left after it become clear Sherlock was not going to be involved in the search.

The silence had been oppressive, unbearable, echoing with the sound of his laugh and the sound of his pleasure, but still magnificent compared to the yammering of his brother.

Mrs. Hudson brought tea.

He watched as the steam rose in tendrils, then wisps, then ceased to rise at all. His tuxedo was still hanging in the bedroom. Both tuxedos. His mobile came out and he texted an old, old friend.

* * *

Somehow they had moved to his bedroom. He had no memory of standing or walking, just of the press of John's body, the wet laving of his tongue on his neck, the feeling of John's muscles shifting beneath his hands.

Somewhere in between, the two the lost their remaining clothing.

If they hadn't been so drunk, every second would have been meticulously recorded, sorted and saved. But if they hadn't been so drunk, it wouldn't have happened at all. So instead of a full film of their actions saved away, he had images, flashes of sensation and movement and sound. Brightest of all was John's smile.

He was on his knees in front of Sherlock, hair tousled, stark naked. Sherlock was looking down at him. John had just firmly licked all the way from his balls to the tip of his cock. He had pulled back, kissed they well of precome that glistened at the slit, and smiled at him. That smile, completely unbound from anxiety, tension and guilt nearly threw him over the edge. The idea of someone wanting him like that, of being that comfortable around him, and of that person being John, _his_ John? _God_.

He had a clear memory of the sound John had made as he came. The garbled word may have started as his name, or an expletive, but it had collapsed into gasping moans as the orgasm had taken in waves.

And, he remembered the image of John half dozing, reclined on the sheets of the bed, naked, sticky, and utterly undone. That one he had seen from the door as he returned, stumbling with flannels. He had stopped, making sure he observed every inch of skin, every angle of limb and joint. Every scar. Every flaw. Everything. It was a sight he was unwilling to part with, regardless of what would happen once inebriation faded and walls were rebuilt around troubling emotions and feelings.

The rest….with enough time in his mind palace he would be able to find it all. It was important, he would take the time. But not then. At that moment, curled against the supine form of a man he had loved for years, all he wanted to do was sleep.

He should have stayed awake.

* * *

The man was prompt. There at the flat within an hour. Delivery made, paid and on his way three minutes on from then.

Sherlock took the take away bag and sat it on the bed.

His room still had the musk of sex in the air. It was in the sheets, in the laundry on the floor. It was on him. He hadn't showered yet. He reached over, under the bed, and pulled out a case, which was set beside the bag with all the care and patience in the world.

* * *

John was awake before him. He woke to his name on John's tongue, a hand gently rubbing his back.

He was smiling.

Sherlock could not muster one of his own. John was dressed. He had taken a shower. He was about to leave. _Waking me to say goodbye. To declare last night a mistake. To ask me to delete it._

All of that was to be expected.

He wouldn't see his best friend, his doctor, or his blogger again. He would go back to being alone. He should have stayed awake, clung to the moment as long as possible. Recorded memories and reactions and feelings in all the detail he could. He would never have another chance.

_Should have. Stupid._

"There's coffee and tea in the kitchen. Plan on getting up today? Or are you going to need a bit of a lie in? Between the drinks and the-uh, after, I was pretty knackered. I think I passed out before you even got back from the loo." He was smiling. He didn't look like a man about to rage, and backpedal. "I'd even bring you a plate if you'll eat it. You never eat enough, Sherlock, but maybe I'll be better fit to motivate you to now. You want a plate?" Sherlock didn't answer, but his stomach growled. "Right then, just a tick."

He jumped up and slipped off the kitchen.

Is this how it will be? Solicitation and overwrought kindness and breakfast as an apology for what's to come? He stared at the two tuxedos hanging in his closet. No, softening the blow. That's all.

"Here. I brought the lot as I wasn't sure what you'd fancy for a hangover. There's paracetamol on the tray too." He took one of the pieces of toast for himself, sitting on the edge of the bed, and smiling at Sherlock. It faded in the face of the silence. "Sherlock? Are you ok? You haven't said anything. I thought that-God, did I get that wrong last night? Christ, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to overstep."

Sherlock snorted his contempt for that.

"Then what? I-It was a bit hazy, and I know we were drunk, and I know better than to make decisions while blasted, but I don't recall doing anything that could have hurt you. I guess all...that, It's really not your area is it? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have pushed. I should have noticed you didn't want to. God, I'm such a prat, I just thought that you, that you wanted me to. I thought you were enjoying it, otherwise I never would have. Dammit I-"

Sherlock just let him ramble in silence. Nothing he was saying was making the least bit of sense. John was the heterosexual, prone to waking up nude beside a man and launching into a full bore crisis of sexual identity. Maybe even a panic attack.

_He sounds worried about me._

"Why?" he interrupted, "You sound sincere, you don't have to be. Thank you for breakfast, but you can go whenever you want."

"Huh? Leave?"

"Yes, I'm awake, thus dispensing with the social expectations that you not slip out without saying goodbye, so you can go without guilt now."

"That'd pretty solidly spoil my plans for the rest of the day."

"Finalizing the wedding? I believe you have a last cake tasting today."

"Not so much. Are you really not getting it?"

"Clearly you are trying to comfort me before your inevitable departure and return to Mary, who you will never tell about this night, simply that we got rather smashed. You will tell me you don't mind if I want to delete all this, and that while you will always value your friendship with me, this is not something you are comfortable with examining. You'll ask me not to mention it again. So there, now it's been said. I'll get right on trying to delete this. You do seem to be moving slower than usual this morning, but try to keep up. It is, after all your thought process we are discussing.

John was staring, open-mouthed and offended. Had Sherlock said that to someone else, John would have been saying, "a Bit Not Good."

Sherlock was expecting any response but what he got. John couldn't stop laughing. At Him. "You daft sod." He finally said when he had regained some composure. "Is this the hangover? Or are you really this rubbish at these things? Look, I'll be as obnoxiously obvious as I can for you." He shoved the tray out of the way, straddled Sherlock's hips and pinned his protesting arms to the bed.

"I am never going to leave you. You are brilliant, and beautiful, and a complete madman. you have been the most important person in my life since I first walked into this flat. I have desperately wanted you since you faced down Moriarty in that pool. I thought you were asexual though, so I never pushed the issue. I have already lost you once when you stepped off that roof, but you gave me my miracle and you came back to me. I will not lose you again." He leaned down and kissed him, deep and passionate, "This-you and I-last night, I'd given up hope it could ever happen. I had superimposed Mary in your place in an effort to get through the darkest time in my life. Last night you got me drunk and I just kept hinting, and you weren't catching on, and then you literally knocked me off my feet. And I, well, I felt your pulse. Damn right I took that chance when it was finally offered."

He sat up, still straddling him, but letting his arms go. "I'd like to tell you that if you dont want me, and that last night was a mistake, I'd just slip away and not bother you again. But it's not true. I was willing to kill for you after less than two days. If you think I'd let you go without a fight, you're an idiot. I love you too much to do that."

"_Now_," John said, his voice going deeper and more commanding, "I am up and dressed so I can go see Mary, you're right about that. I owe it to her to tell her about this in person, and I am not going to cancel a wedding by text. I'm not you. So, I am going to go talk to her, pick up the contact list for the caterers and whatnot, grab some essentials, and then I'm going to come back here. Shouldn't take more than a couple hours. Then I'll be back, and I'll place the necessary calls to cancel everything. At which point we can proceed to systematically defile every surface and location in the flat. One. By. One." Sherlock reflexively licked his lips.

His mind was scrambling to process this declaration he had been certain existed only in daydreams. Then John had said that about defiling….and somewhat derailed his train of thought.

"Only one thing left then, you just need to tell me you want me here."

Sherlock blinked up at the man atop him. He had been so very wrong, and felt like such a moron for it. How could he have failed to notice this for so long? John was a terrible liar. Always had been.

How could he have missed the way John was staring at him, his confidence beginning to erode in the face of Sherlock's extended silence. "God. Yes." He answered, flinging himself up to capture his John's mouth as a smile broke across it.

It took a while before they actually left that spot.

"Do you want me to come too?"

John laughed again, "No, dont think that'd go over well."

"Of course. But, she might be upset."

"I think I can take her if she tries to slap me." They'd made it back to their chairs. "Eat while I'm gone, there's plenty in there for breakfast, and we'll order more later on. I don't plan on going outside for a couple days." He winked, and even drowning in happiness and confusion, Sherlock felt the little frisson of arousal at the implication.

"John, I.. that is… had I known that…I feel I should tell you... that is..."

"Hey, don't worry about it. I know you're not such a bloody genius at talking about these things. You've got a couple hours, and if you don't have the words then, well, I'm patient. I also _already know_, so you've got the rest of our lives to find them. I-I meant that, if you wanted-I didn't mean to assume that you would want me-" He blushed furiously even as he smiled sheepishly, "How about I stop making assumptions like that?"

"Don't." Was all Sherlock got out before they were snogging again. He had never been this happy. He didn't know how to handle it. It felt like his chest was too small to hold in his heart. His mind was swimming in a thousand emotions and memories he had locked permanently away with John's engagement. He had opened that room and let them all out last night. Like a child with confetti crackers, they were now draped over every other thought in his mind palace. He was sure his cheeks had never hurt like this from frowning all the time, so he couldn't explain the pain he was feeling from smiling. None of it made sense, and he just didn't care.

"Go fast." He said, half shoving the man towards the door. The sooner he left the sooner he would return.

* * *

Lestrade came back. Sherlock met him in the stairwell. Anything to shorten his stay.

There was something in his hand, a small bag. Very small. Something for him then. Lestrade said all of the right things. All of the appropriate platitudes. He patted Sherlock on the shoulder, realized his mistake, pulled his hand back. He assured him the search was underway, that they would succeed. That they wouldn't give up until they had.

He asked him not to do anything rash.

Did he think he had any right to say so? To tell him what to do?

Especially now?

This was his fault. He knew that.

* * *

Sherlock had stood in the bathroom for a few minutes, but never actually stepped under the stream of hot water. He knew he was filthy, the bars hadn't been fresh, and they had fallen down rather a lot. Then, afterwards….He smiled to himself, breathing deeply and shutting off the water.

He liked that he could still smell John on his body. The shower would keep for a few hours. This way all he had to do was breathe and could see John on his knees once again.

His dressing gown hung on the back of the door, but he returned to his room to find his favorite suit. John liked him in a suit.

It would not be long before he was back. Part of his mind was rapidly compiling a list of everything in the house he could claim needed to be 'defiled' as John had put it. It was rather a lengthy endeavour. They would need quite a long time.

He smiled again. It was a pleasant implication.

The scotch glasses were still on the table. He knew he should clean them up, but would worry about it later. John's chair sat across from him, nothing like a replacement for the man himself, but a steady reminder. That chair was aging, and damaged, and was far from stylish, but it was an extension of the man now. He and the chair were wrapped together a bit too tightly to consider replacing it. Sentiment. I shouldn't. No, no one here to see, doesn't matter.

All he had to do was take a deep breath and he could smell John on him once more. John was kneeling again.

_Definitely sentiment._

His phone buzzed. John.

**So how many surfaces there are?  
I KNOW you've been counting.**

**Your objective will take several weeks at least. SH**

**That all?**  
**I'll buy some more tables then.**

**Chairs too. SH**

**Ok, just got here.**  
**I'll text if I can before leaving.**

**Come home soon. SH**

**I will.**

Sherlock sat in silence, cataloguing everything he had learned about John in the past sixteen hours. It was a large process, hundreds of observations to sift through and assign. The room dedicated to John would need to be converted to an entire wing at this rate.

**Not going well. Should have just texted her.**

**Yes. SH**

**Not really.**

Every reaction he had made last night, every shudder, gasp, moan and whimper would all need to be looked at individually. That was all rather unclear though. Too blurry to make sense of it. He couldn't stop grinning though. Any detail he had missed last night he could reassess when John returned. After all there were tables and chairs and rugs and counters and beds and walls. He would have more than enough evidence soon to feel confident he knew John's wants better than the man himself.

It could even be an experiment. John would let him. As long as he wasn't getting drugged, and it didn't take place in the dishes -now labelled "food only"- John always agreed to Sherlock's experiments.

He wanted to find the words to tell him all of this, but John was right. John was right far more often that Sherlock would admit. They had plenty of time. Whatever luck he had been gifted with had clearly all been spent on John Watson.

Would John want to get married? That would allow him an opportunity to carefully write and rehearse the words he wanted to say.

**Very not good.**  
**Tea pot is ruined.**

**Having a domestic? SH**

**I should say so.**

**Lestrade? SH**

**Not needed.**  
**Crying in the loo now.**  
**Just have to wait.**  
**Home soon.**

He drank the cold coffee that he had forgotten while puzzling at the night's revelations. It would have been delicious hot.

_How do I deserve him? How do I tell him how much he means?_

**Ran out of tissues.  
****She's now onto hankies in bedroom.  
****I should probably follow.**

**Don't. Come home.  
****I'm almost done counting. SH**

**Soon. She's a mess.  
****She doesn't deserve this.**

He started to tidy up breakfast. Plates and pans and mugs. Simple domestic things. So very like John to make breakfast. He had known that last night, while not a first in the physical sense, had been a moment of profound emotional vulnerability, and had tried to make him feel safe and loved with an offering of jam and toast and eggs.

That was something he would never think to do. Now he would though. Inevitably in the future together, when John was angry, he would make breakfast and bring it to him. He would also clear out the old experiments. And fetch the milk. He was always talking about those.

They were easy.

He could do those.

But he still needed the words. He had to find them.

John needed to hear the words, but most of them were so inadequate. So plebian. They would have to be improved upon. _Perhaps I can assemble something from existing literary texts._

**Ok, this is gett  
****Ilove yiu sherlo**

Sherlock stared down at the screen. John was not a careful or skilled typist, but that was an outlier.

Texting surreptitiously then? Perhaps Mary was not leaving the room and he was still trying to reach him.

**? SH**

No answer for ten minutes. He called. It rang out.

He called again. The same.

Again. Same.

Something was wrong. He sent a text to Lestrade. He was closer to Mary's flat. Lestrade was confused but headed over anyways.

He called again.

An answer.

Not John.

"Hello, do you know this phone's owner?"

"Who are you? Why do you have John's phone?" There was a roaring in his ears that was only growing worse.

"I'm sorry sir, there's been a very serious incident involving your friend-"

"He's not my friend!" He didn't mean it like that, but it was important. John wasn't just his friend. He was everything. And he knew what that phrase meant. They never said it on the phone. _Very Serious. It always meant one thing. Otherwise he'd have mentioned his condition, he would have said critical._

"Oh, well, he, John that is, he's here at the hospital. He's been shot. Are you his next of kin?"

_Next of kin._

Anything else the man-doctor most likely-said was obliterated by the sound in his mind. Everywhere he turned, there was emotion and memory, and all of it was being overwritten with pain. The roar was still there, but he couldn't tell. All that was left was the screaming.

* * *

Sherlock opened the bag Lestrade had brought and pulled out the only item inside.

John's dog tags.

Cold, freezing actually, but they burned against his skin. He hadn't gone to see the body. He had refused to go to the crime scene. He didn't need to see a bullet hole in his chest.

Mary was an ex-assassin and international intelligence agent.

He didn't care.

She had killed him and she had vanished.

He didn't care. It wouldn't bring him back.

John might have lived if he hadn't texted Sherlock before calling 999. He had bled out on the bedroom floor.

It didn't matter. How didn't matter, now it was a fact.

He opened the other bag, the case, and quickly filled a syringe.

He took the lid off the other bottles, and began.

There wasn't much time. Mycroft or Mrs Hudson or Lestrade would come by to watch him once they managed to finish the thought process.

A Danger Night, they'd call it. They'd think he hadn't had time to restock yet. Otherwise they would never have left.

_Idiots_.

He took all of it in silence, chasing the last of the pills-he wasn't even sure what they were, just plentiful and conflicting-with that bit of watered scotch John had not had a chance to drink.

It was starting already. He leaned back into the pillows where John had slept, breathing in his smell as he drifted into the dark.

* * *

Mycroft Holmes signed the paperwork and slid it across to the nurse.

"And these please, sir."

He glanced down at the power of attorney forms, and began to complete them. Quickly done.

"You'll contact me if there is any change, of course?"

"Of course. Though Mr Holmes, I would not want you to have false hope, his doctors made it very clear that-"

"Yes."

He rose, umbrella in hand, and exited the administrator's office. The smell of hospitals was always unpleasant, a faint scent of death under the hyperclean odour of disinfectant. Here was something worse. It wasn't that easy here. It wasn't so final. It wasn't certain. Death at least was certain.

Whatever the smell was, he felt he would never rid it from his mind or his body.

Greg Lestrade rose when he emerged, silent.

They walked together down the hall, neither commenting on the murmurs behind the doors. After a moment taken to calm his reaction, they looked through the door at the gaunt man seated in a chair by the windows. He wasn't restrained, the door wasn't even closed. It wasn't necessary.

But he sat there unmoving, watching the bees in the yard outside, a shell of a man.

Nearly a month since he had emerged from the coma, and he had not spoken or responded to anyone. The only action he had taken without being guided was to slip a set of dog tags around his neck when he saw them on the hospital table.

"It's not your fault." Greg said softly.

"Yes it is, Gregory." He paused, considering the great man before him, who doctors and medicine could not reach, could not save. This man that had miraculously avoided permanent damage in his attempt to join his only friend and lover. This man that they all knew would never come back to them. "I should never have called the ambulance."

Greg looked down with wet eyes.

There was nothing to say.

They turned, and walked away.

Sherlock's fingers settled against the metal on his chest, and he continued to watch the bees.

* * *

**A/N- **This thing got stuck in my head, and every time I tried to work on Protectors, I found myself writing in this world instead, so, I just got it out. I hope you enjoy it, although I know, it wasn't exactly cheery.


End file.
